Apple CEO Tim Cook has published an online letter that emphasises the company’s focus on privacy and data protection. It follows an incident a couple of weeks ago when a number of high-profile Apple iCloud accounts were hacked.
The letter says a two-step verification process now protects customer data as well as Apple ID account information. It also knocks some of the company’s competitors, saying “we don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers”.
In addition, Mr Cook writes “we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”
Apple’s new iOS 8 operating system encrypts personal data - including photos, messages and contacts - by using a customer passcode that can’t be bypassed by the company. According to Apple, “it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8”.